The suspected gunman in the Waffle House shooting is still on the loose and his record shows that he was interviewed by the FBI and his guns were seized after an incident last year.
The post 5 Fast Facts You Need To Know About The Tennessee Waffle House Shooting appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Image Credit: CNNNashville, NC – A police chief in a small eastern North Carolina town, Chief Thomas Bashore, in collaboration with town manager Hank Raper, began a program — using compassion instead of violence — known as the HOPE initiative that is both saving lives and lowering crime.
Nashville, North Carolina, a town of 5,400 offers a unique program to help addicts recover, rather than continue the cycle of crime and addiction, by allowing addicts to turn themselves into police with their drugs and paraphernalia, without being thrown in a cage.
Instead of them facing arrest, they get help getting into a program to fight addiction.
Thomas Spikes, 24, has battled addiction since before he was a teenager, and credits Bashore with saving his life by putting him on a path to recovery from the deadly scourge of opioid addiction.
“He saved my life for sure,” he said. “I owe a lot to him and the program.”
As opioid deaths continue to rise dramatically across the United States, replacing car accidents as the number one cause of unintentional deaths, the state of North Carolina has seen a more than 340 percent increase in opioid deaths from 2010 to 2016.
“There’s no clear characteristic of what a heroin or opioid addiction looks like,” Raper told CNN. “It’s not a white problem, it’s not a black problem, it’s not a Hispanic problem, middle class, working class, upper class. It affects all peoples of all walks of life.”
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The HOPE initiative was modeled on the “Angel” program in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which allows addicts to safely get medical help and police assistance—without fear of being arrested. These innovative programs are creating a new paradigm that reconfigures the manner in which law enforcement responds to addiction.
“They walk into the front door, if they have drugs or paraphernalia on them at any time, they can turn it in to us at that time, and have no charges filed. And we facilitate them into recovery,” Bashore said.
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“We have actually had individuals who have brought in heroin bags and turned that over because they knew that they were going to get into recovery and they didn’t want that around when they got out,” Bashore said.
To ensure that there would be no impediments to the HOPE program, Chief Bashore and Raper recruited the county district attorney, who was on board with the initiative, ensuring that addicts seeking help would not be charged. With the support of the county attorney, the HOPE program began on Feb. 9, 2016—with the first addict coming into the police station seeking help only eight days later.
“It was eye-opening,” recalled Bashore. “That individual came in and we spent the better part of 7 and a half hours getting him processed. Only then did I leave the hospital and come back to the police department to start calling facilities to start having him placed, after he left detox. You can spend hours on the phone, calling facilities, saying, ‘Do you have a bed?"”
Bashore has been intimately involved in the program, driving many of the 172 men and women that have been helped by the HOPE initiative. Revealing the changing nature of law enforcement’s fight against drug addition—and a clear movement from a punitive “War on Drugs” mentality, to a recovery-based model—Bashore has worked to build personal relationships with numerous rehabilitation facilities across North Carolina.
The business cards he passes out even have his personal cellphone number so that rehab facilities across the state can personally alert him when a space opens up for an addict.
“My cellphone, it rings all the time,” Bashore said. “Each participant who comes through the program and all their family members have it. So, when they need something, they reach out.”
In addition to helping numerous addicts get clean, the HOPE initiative has substantially changed the dynamics between the police and the community. Bashore said he is working to help people understand that substance abuse is a disease and that his department’s goal is to “supportive not only for their benefit, but for the community benefit.”
Revealing exactly how this new approach by law enforcement, to drugs and addiction, can drastically alter crime rates, Bashore said that crime is down 40 percent since the program’s inception.
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“We’ve had a pretty significant drop in our crimes that are associated with substance-abuse disorder,” Bashore said. “Things like shoplifting and larcenies and breaking into cars.”
The beautiful thing is that HOPE does not limit its services to residents of Nashville, as people from across the state have taken advantage of the program—as well as people from as far away as California and Pennsylvania.
The initiative has no cost to participants in the program, and is funded through small grants, fundraisers, and donations.
“The chief paid for the first two months that I was there and the rehab I was at,” recalled Spikes. After spending over half his life in the grip of addiction, Spikes has now been clean for four months after leaving the rehabilitation facility.
In an interview with CNN, Spikes said that he first used drugs when he was 12 years old. “It started off with just smoking weed,” he said, “then occasional pills, and it progressed through the years.” Eventually, his addiction became a $200 to $300 a day habit at its worst.
After being caught with heroin and sent to jail in October 2016, he had his first encounter with Chief Bashore. Initially, Spikes was skeptical of any help police offered, and expressed a commonly held belief: “You don’t talk to cops, you don’t associate with them, they’re not your friends.”
Spikes’ perceptions quickly began to evolve when he recognized that Bashore was solely there to help him, no questions asked.
The chief “never tried to pry into anything in my life in that era,” Spikes said. “[He doesn’t] care who you hang out with, what kind of drugs you do.”
After having gone through countless rehab facilities in the past, Spikes said his life has changed because of Chief Bashore and the HOPE initiative.
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“He saved my life for sure because if it wasn’t for the HOPE Initiative, I wouldn’t have gotten help,” Spikes said. “My life has done a 180. I’m working, I have a vehicle, a house, I have a beautiful girlfriend with a baby on the way.”
This inspirational police chief decided that criminalizing addiction is a clear recipe for failure, and increased crime and death in his community—and made a decision to do something about it. By not comporting with the “get tough on crime” mentality that is often prevalent in law enforcement, Bashore is actually making a difference in people’s lives. He is also saving taxpayers money as the cost of rehabilitation is far less than prison, and it is being independently funded.
“Of those 172 people that have come through the program, I’ve actually been to two funerals. Knowing what the alternative could have been for Thomas … (who) just recently disclosed to me that his girlfriend’s pregnant, he’s going to be a father,” he said. “So, that’s an amazing thing. That touches me deeply.”
Nashville, TN — Last Month, Nashville resident Dustin Owens was pulled over by police who were protecting society from the likes of a bumper sticker of two poorly drawn stick figures, with the caption ‘Making my family.’ Owens was ticketed and given 45 days to comply with the citation and remove the sticker. However, Owens refused and could now face jail.
Citing Tennessee Code Annotated 55-8-187, police claim that Owen’s stick figure sticker is patently offensive.
To avoid distracting other drivers and thereby reduce the likelihood of accidents arising from lack of attention or concentration, the display of obscene and patently offensive movies, bumper stickers, window signs or other markings on or in a motor vehicle that are visible to other drivers is prohibited and display of such materials shall subject the owner of the vehicle on which they are displayed, upon conviction, to a fine of not less than two dollars ($2.00) nor more than fifty dollars ($50.00).
On Thursday, Owens filed a countering lawsuit in Davidson County Chancery Court claiming the police were wrong to ticket him for the bumper sticker.
“The primary question presented in this case is whether the following sticker qualifies as an ‘obscenity’ – a narrow, unprotected category of speech reserved for hardcore pornography – thereby causing it to lose the broad presumption of free-expression protection guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” according to the complaint against the Metro Nashville Police Department.
“Because this stick-figure cartoon does not come anywhere close to satisfying the applicable constitutional standard for obscenity, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department should be enjoined from punishing the plaintiff for displaying it,” the lawsuit states.
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According to Owens, he was pulled over by police and ticketed by the officer who ordered him to remove the stick figures from his car and “demonstrate full compliance” within 45 days.
“To date, Mr. Owens has not complied,” his lawsuit states. “Consequently, Mr. Owens is currently living under the pain of a pending censorship order from the MNPD, and he is subject to being punished and prosecuted under penalty of law if he does not comply with it.”
For refusing to remove this harmless bumper sticker, Owens faces the very real possibility of being kidnapped by police and thrown in a cage. This stand by Owens, although it may seem humorous because of the content, is a very real and powerful one.
“The average person applying contemporary community standards would not find that Mr. Owens’ stick-figure cartoon appeals predominantly to the prurient interest in sex. Mr. Owens’ stick-figure cartoon does not depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct as defined by Tennessee law,” the complaint states. “Taken as whole, Mr. Owens’ stick-figure cartoon does not lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
When police can claim the legal authority to pull someone over and demand money from that person, because of a drawing on a sticker, something is very wrong. When a man is facing the possibility of losing his freedom for a bumper sticker that harms no one, the very notion of the land of the free is seen for the farce that it is.
For months we"ve warned about the impending collapse of the luxury real estate markets in New York and San Francisco amid tepid demand and a supply glut that is getting ready to flood the market with new capacity (see here, here and here). Of course, one of the first signs of excess capacity comes in the form of rent concessions, which as we pointed out over the summer, have been relatively easy to find in the large metro markets.
“Listings that once rented in just two to three weeks can now take two to three months to rent,” explains Paul Hwang, principal broker at Skybox Realty, a San Francisco-based real estate agency.
At least four new apartment buildings have opened within a three-block radius of one another during the last 18 months in San Francisco’s thriving South of Market neighborhood, which is home to major tech companies like Airbnb, Pinterest and Yelp (YELP).
Those four buildings — Jasper, 340 Fremont, 399 Fremont and Solaire — frequently offer some sort of bargain for prospective renters. 340 Fremont is offering six weeks of free rent; Solaire is pitching four weeks of free rent, free on-site storage and $1,000 discounts to renters who work at tech companies like Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB) and Yahoo (YHOO). Meanwhile, another building, 399 Fremont, even tried giving away free bikes one weekend.
But new buildings weren"t the only ones offering incentives. Craigslist was also flooded with listings like the one below offering free rent and a $500 gift card to interested renters.
Unfortunately, as the Wall Street Journal points out, NYC and San Francisco aren"t the only cities across the country that are about to get flooded with new luxury apartments. In 2017 alone, 378,000 new apartments are expected to be completed across the country, or roughly 35% more than the 20-year average.
Developers in New York are already offering up to three months of free rent on some projects. In Los Angeles, some landlords are offering six months of free parking, and some in Houston are waiving security deposits. Meanwhile, MPF Vice President Jay Parsons said he expects little or no rent growth in urban rental markets this year.
“This will be a very challenged leasing environment almost everywhere,” Mr. Parsons said.
The slowdown, he said, is being driven not by a pullback in demand but rather a flood of new apartments. Demand for urban properties jumped after the housing bust as young, high-earning professionals eschewed homeownership and flocked to big cities. Developers responded by focusing most of their efforts on high-end properties.
Now, though, the number of upscale apartments coming onto the market appear to be outpacing the number of renters able to move into them: More than 50,000 new units were rented by tenants in the fourth quarter in the U.S., six times the number in the year-earlier period. But that demand was overwhelmed by the 88,000 new units that were completed in the quarter, the most since the mid-1980s, according to MPF.
That gap looks set to widen in 2017. More than 378,000 new apartments are expected to be completed across the country this year, almost 35% more than the 20-year average, according to real estate tracker Axiometrics Inc.
And smaller cities like Dallas, Atlanta and Nashville are expecting some of the largest supply gluts.
The sluggishness is expected to spread across the U.S., hitting markets from Nashville, Tenn., and Dallas to Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Dallas is expected to see nearly 25,000 new apartments delivered, compared with the long-term average of roughly 9,000 new apartments a year, according to Axiometrics. Los Angeles is expected to get roughly 13,000 new apartments, nearly double the historical average.
Nashville could see some 8,500 new apartments, more than triple the typical 2,400 apartments completed annually.
John Tirrill, managing partner at SWH Partners, an Atlanta developer that has several projects under way in the Nashville area, is leasing a new five-story property with a fitness center, yoga and barre studio and swimming pool. He has lowered rents from $2.25 a square foot to $2.10 a square foot—a $150 discount on a 1,000-square-foot apartment—and is offering one to two months of free rent.
Meanwhile, as Wolf Street notes, rent concessions have become fairly pervasive across the country.
And, banks are starting to get just a little worried that they financed a few too many luxury skyscrapers.
Banks are pulling back on lending, which could help slow the pace of construction starting in late 2018.
“We’re just being really selective,” said John Cannon, a senior vice president at Pinnacle Financial Partners, a Nashville-based financial-services company that has increased its focus on multifamily lending in the last couple of years. “Multifamily has a large number of units on the ground that they really have to demonstrate some absorption.”
We vaguely recall seeing the single-family version of this movie a few years ago...
